The Other Critics

Love and Hate for the Inn LW12; Esca Pulls Even With Babbo

The Sun’s Paul Adams considers the Inn LW12 an out-and-out Canadian restaurant, to a greater extent than anyone else has, and praises the poutine, a Québécois version of disco fries, along with the rest of the menu. [NYS]

Poutine aside, Randall Lane thinks the Inn LW12 is a snobby “poseur sanctuary” still carrying the taint of Lotus, owner Jeffrey Jah’s other place. [TONY]

Esca gets a third star from the Times, moving it even with Babbo, and reminding everybody that David Pasternack is not just Mario’s fish guy, but one of the city’s great chefs. [Esca]

Peter Meehan hits two supermarket cafés, Whole Foods on the Bowery and Fairway in Red Hook and finds them both totally lousy. Well, there’s a reason some places are under the radar. [NYT]

Eminent feinschmecker and writer Calvin Trillin accompanies Robert Sietsema in quest of a twelve-bean Ecuadorean stew, which they almost find at Sunnyside’s Guagua Pichincha. [VV]

Moira Hodgson sounds like she was ready to give Anthos three stars – she suggests as much – but a few botched dishes took the place down a notch and kept her from giving it the kind of full-throated praise it got from Randall Lane last week.[NYO]

Ryan Sutton is the very first writer, as usual, to write about Provence and Resto, and only has good things to say about the meal he ate in each. [Bloomberg]
Related: Openings: Provence, Resto, Gold St., Zipper Tavern [NYM]

In her short New Yorker review of E.U., Andrea Thompson recapitulates exactly the same narrative everyone else has, going on about its troubles getting a liquor license, and how amazing it is that it’s still in business, before describing the décor and only then getting around to praising the food in the end. Really, who cares about what the restaurant went through before? [NYer]

Love and Hate for the Inn LW12; Esca Pulls Even With Babbo